celebrating lightweight basses

I play smaller body basses, Spectors...my 3 5ers are ~9 pounds my 3 4s are in the low 8s.
Rock on.

 

7.3 lbs.
It only sounds heavy.

 

that must be Empress. I had one with an Ash body that was a boat anchor.

 

I've been preferring lighter basses for decades. My first way back when was my Silvertone Model 1444 at about 6.5 lbs. My lightest are my UBass and '80s Guild Ashbory at about 2.5 lbs followed by my Hofner Ignition Club at 4.5 lbs.

It's very unusual for me to use a bass that weighs over 6.5 lbs.

 

My Ric 4003SW is 7.9lbs. On the guitar front, I play Kiesel Vaders with chambered swamp ash bodies.

 

I've put together many Fender clones starting with lightweight bodies plus lightweight tuners, aluminum knobs, aluminum neck plates, and sometimes lightweight bridges. Several are in the low 7 pound range and several more are about 8 pounds even with chrome bridge covers. Just as important as the low weight, they must also balance. These basses sacrifice nothing for the sake of low weight.

My lightest real bass (as opposed to a U-bass) is the Danelectro Longhorn at about 5 3/4 pounds. It's a little sweetie.

 

Swamp ash.
Everything else being the same, a cut in the upper part of the tree will result in a heavier blank of wood. Conversely, a piece of wood obtained from the lower part of the tree will be lighter. The rule here is that: the further north the ash tree grows, and the higher and the more internal the cut into the tree, the heavier the wood will be, and vice versa.
Low cuts of heavy ash may weigh as much as upper cuts of swamp ash, and very external and low cuts of swamp ash may be so light that they weigh similar to basswood or even less and this is the reason for the great confusion there is on this subject.

Tone wise, a light weighing piece of ash will deliver almost the same tone, both if either taken from a hard ash tree or a swamp ash tree. European hard ash tends to a pink shade and to have a closer grain pattern. This is due to the tree being smaller in diameter than the one growing in the USA. This also causes European ash to more often show some brown strikes because of the hardwood getting into the cut.

 

Looks nice. How is the Pickup compared to the SRX ones?

 

Ironically, I've only added weight by moving from four to six strings... Them necks are heavy, and if you reduce the weight on the bodies, you get instant neck dive. I'm toying around with moving to headless basses for that reason.

 

I removed the pick guard from my EBMM SUB bass. Relocated the pickup closer to the neck by routing the heck out of the body. Definitely shaved a little weight. It’s a heavy bastard to begin with.

 

In the past month, I have acquired a G & L L-1000 and a G & L JB5. They weigh 6.9 and 8.8 lbs. respectively. Looking forward to gigging extensively with these; should help with my back issues.

 

And did you give it a name? Like "My Brother"? So you can tell people, "He ain't heavy; he's My Brother"?

 

8.1 lbs

 

I've bought light basses. My five string has a chambered swamp ash body and weighs less than my 8lb, 12oz (my heaviest) alder-bodied four-string. My favorite P-bass (swamp ash body) weighs in at 7lbs, 4oz:

 

Grabbing some popcorn so I can wait for the haters to come in and inform us that:
a) no bass under <some arbitrary threshold> pounds can possibly create a sound worthy of being called a bass
b) if you feel a need to whine and complain about a bass over that weight threshold, then you need to man up and hit the gym.

 

a dying breed... ...with shoulder problems

 

I could have ordered my 4003SW closer to 8lbs but got the one half way between 8 & 9. Its plenty light and no risk of neck dive. Of the other 4003s that I have, my favorite is actually the heaviest at about 9lb 5oz. It just feels right...go figure.